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(c.1455–1500)

Portuguese explorer who led the first European expedition (1488) to round the Cape of Good Hope, thus opening the sea route to Asia via the Atlantic and Indian Oceans. On a voyage surveying the West African coast he had sailed to latitude 26° S, off Namibia, when his ships were caught in a storm and swept further south for 13 days. His landfall (1488) was near the southernmost tip of Africa: coasting eastwards, he found that the land turned north. He is attributed with having named it variously as the Cape of Storms and the Cape of Good Hope; he perished just off the Cape in 1500, on a later voyage during which Brazil had been discovered.